The Hasten the Day Trilogy

by Billy Roper

  The Islamic Center of America was burning so ferociously when they broke out of the cloverleaf that they had to take the eastbound lanes westwards past it. Dozens of dead Arabs, several clusters of them grouped around crew-serviced heavy machine guns on trailers attached to military vehicles, were scattered around the parking lot.

  Moments later they came under fire again, and the eighty men Randall fought beside pulled quickly off the road into the cover of the forested fringe to their left to dismount and do what they did best. They had finally taken the Henry Ford Community College by dusk, as the enemy fell back. He spent the night camped in River Rouge Park watching the Thunderbolts pound the Joe Louis arena and the Civic Center from six miles away. The Ambassador bridge was bombed to push the insurgents into a corner. It had taken them three more days to work their way east, block by block, to the river. The 1st battalion, 126th cavalry of the Michigan Army National Guard had become his best buddies then. Troop A from Cadillac took seventy percent casualties overrunning the New Black Panther Party positions around the Opera House, where the former electric company lineman had seen the effects of BGM TOW-70 guided missiles crewed by defecting black soldiers being used against American armor.

  Those mutineers knew they had nothing coming if they surrendered, so when they ran out of ordinance they hid out in the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. The Air National Guard flooded it, making the issue moot. Several hundred black militants holed up in the towers of the Renaissance Center. The water and power were turned off to the block, and Bradley Fighting Vehicles ringed Jefferson Avenue to wait for the inevitable surrender. Randall had been reminded of footage he had seen of 9/11 victims jumping from the twin towers in New York, as Randall had watched most of the black leaders take the easy way out from the rooftops. Some of them appeared to have fashioned makeshift cardboard and paneling wings for themselves, to try to glide. None of them were able to jump far enough to reach the water.

  The Battle of Grand Rapids, by contrast, was a cakewalk. For one thing, six months of starvation, a hard winter, and mounting casualties had reduced the number of insurgents on the ground here, and everywhere. For another, it was a lot harder for them to hide in plain sight and blend in, as this part of the world just kept on getting Whiter. The ones who were left were just as desperate, though.

  At the moment Randall’s group was bunking out in Millennium Park, enjoying a day of rest. That was the plan. Balderson had first gotten involved in the Michigan Militia Corps, the Wolverines, a couple of years ago, when Terry, a buddy at work, had begun sending him e-mails about it, then taken him shooting with them. His original motivation had been to have an excuse to get out of the house. Barbara was not a happy housewife. She was always on him about there not being enough steaks in the freezer, or the yard being mowed, or the kids taken to the park, or the dog walked. It was a way to get some breathing room, some man time. A few weeks into it, meeting every weekend with the same group of guys, and the talk shifted from guns to politics. He began to understand their distrust of the government. Randall had never been into conspiracy theories or wearing tin foil hats, but some things like Ruby Ridge and Waco couldn’t be ignored.

  Along with his growing anti-government political activism, Randall became involved in the group’s tactical training. Sure, at first it was just cool and macho to run around in the woods with a gun, but after a bit he really got into the military science of it. After a year, he was put in charge of his local group. His buddy Terry wasn’t too happy about that, but the other guys didn’t seem to mind him being a shot-caller. His wife would not call him “Lieutenant Balderson”, though. Barbara was suspicious of why he was spending so much time gone every weekend, so he brought her to a meeting with him. Before long, she made friends with a couple of the other wives, and his kids played with their kids. Under the militia’s influence, she pulled their kids out of public school, and began home schooling them.

  Randall and Barbara began to prepare. The whole Balderson family got involved. Whether it was the Zombie Apocalypse or SHTF or whatever it was called, they began prepping and planning for different scenarios and contingencies. Their marriage became more solid, and happier, as far as Randall was concerned. When the economic downturn accelerated, they liquidated their savings account and invested in canned food and ammunition. A few months later, the riots began. They, and the group, had seen it coming a mile away. The local groups began meeting with other local groups, networking and organizing into larger, interlocking cells. When the cities erupted, they became proactive. First, they moved their families to safety, then they went on the offensive. Randall hardly recognized himself, these days. He wondered if his kids would.

  He had become a warrior, but he still was a rockabilly guy. That gave Randall a distinctive character and flair among the other mid-ranking Michigan Militia leaders. That was especially true as their ranks grew with newbie volunteers who all wanted to look and act like the R. Lee Ermey or Rambo. He leaned against the beaten up Jeep’s bullet-riddled door and used the side mirror to comb back his pompadour for the hundredth time today. A black leather motorcycle jacket draped over his Kevlar vest. On his helmet, which always ruined his hair, was the Sharpie enscribed motto “Front Toward Enemy”. He had an image to uphold, here in the latter days of the Apocalypse. People had certain expectations. A shrill whistling sound broke through faintly over the noise of his I-pod. He glanced up, and before he could pop out the ear bud, a blast lifted him off the ground and threw him back to it. Randall almost landed on his feet, but not quite.

  Nobody noticed as he pulled himself up by the door handle, because other mortar rounds were coming in, all around him. One hit a truck squarely, as men jumped out of the back to find better cover. Others fell short and spouted sand up from the beach at the Splashpad. They must be coming from the 196, he thought, looking around for his squad. Craig and Terry were bent over low, running towards his position from the lake. Another series of mortar rounds struck, a couple of them hitting together, turning Terry into a red mist and blur as he watched. Craig made it to the Jeep beside him, out of breath. Randall and the inked-up motorcycle mechanic looked at each other and shook their heads. As suddenly as it had started, the attack ended. All of the Arabs were gone by the time they got to the suspected launch site. This was the kind of hit and run fighting the enemy had been reduced to, but it still stung.

  The next morning, after tending to their wounded and trucking off their dead, Randall’s Michigan Militia unit faced no resistance driving across town to pull security at the Gerald R. Ford international airport. They were technically all a part of the U.S. armed forces, now. Orders were orders.

  Just after midnight another mortar barrage began, this one hitting the terminal building. He had just been sitting down at a table in the dusty former Bell’s Brew Pub to eat his MRE when the roof fell in ten feet away, interrupting another song in his ear. By the time he and several other militiamen had made it out the back doors to the gates, the mortars had gone quiet, but a chilling, warbling chant had replaced it. The spotlights were being shot out as he could see the perimeter fence shake from attackers coming through or over it. He ordered the men around him to take cover behind a line of motorized baggage carts.

  “Hit them as soon as they come onto the tarmac, so you can see them good! Let’s rock and roll!”

  He didn’t know any of the guys around him by name, but they followed his orders, and held their fire until the dark shapes emerged from the breached fence-line onto the half-lit runways. Randall quickly shrugged off his motorcycle jacket to free up his heavily tattooed arms. He took a deep breath, hit ‘play’, and pulled back his charging handle to chamber a round as the guitar kicked in. Oh, my boy, my boy.

  Just four minutes later they had repelled one wave, then another came at them after regrouping and awaiting more reinforcements through the fence. Where were their own reinforcements? Where was their air cover? Randall changed magazines for the third time, and quickly lit a cigarette. Who knew, it
might be his last. Well, everybody has to quit, sometime. He had meant to give up the habit, just not necessarily today. Three more left…magazines, not coffin nails. He had more than enough of them to last him.

  He could hear firing from the front of the building, now, but he wasn’t sure which had been the diversion, and really it didn’t matter, too much. He had enough on his plate. TCB, baby, Taking Care of Business. A couple of guys to his left were down, one not moving. Here they came again, screaming about ‘Allah Akbar!’ and ‘Death to the infidels!’. At extreme range for his AR, he saw a staggered line, jogging forward while looking from side to side at the guys beside them. They were trying to get encouragement that they weren’t going in alone. Nobody wants to die a hero alone, when it comes down to it, not even when promised a bunch of virgins. Randall had never understood that part. Personally, he would have been motivated a lot more by the promise of like, seventy-two really experienced kitty cats, but these were some messed up dudes. Now the first line were in range…

  One in red, he led, and bled..

  ”Well it’s been ten years and a thousand tears, and look at the mess I’m in…” He sang the song along with his I-pod, as loud as he could. He tried to line up a shot to take two with one bullet, for fun. One went down, the other staggered, but kept coming.

  “Well I sit and I pray, in my broken down Chevrolet…”

  A couple of them were trying to let loose with some wild shots on the run, without effect, so far. He spaced his shots calmly, taking out the ones directly in front of him first. “There’s got to be a better way!”, Randall cackled at the joke around his Lucky Strike and widened his arc of fire, to cover the gap where they were closer.

  “Take away, take away, take away this ball and chain…” His carbine locked back, the magazine empty. He smoothly pushed the release button, let the empty fall, and slammed a full one into the bottom, heard the click, slapped the bolt release, and lined up for another shot. When he regained his sight picture, he saw that the ragheads had turned tail and were loping off.

  “…cause I’m sick and I’m tired, and I can’t take any more pain…” He had no qualms about shooting all of them he could in the back. Pop!

  “…never to return again, take away, take away…..” Pop! Pop! Hey, we all feed the gods we choose to serve. He was the Ayatollah of Rock-and-Rolla, daddy-o! His ears rang in stereo like microphone feedback.

  Whole Lot A Shakin’ Goin’ On

  The Mexican Army had as serious a resupply problem as he did, Captain Ming calculated. Their supply lines up Highway 5 was being interdicted around Bakersfield by regular strafings and bombings from the flying Mormons. Of course the little brown people were used to smuggling things, so they got enough supplies in to keep the pressure on. Still, not having the option of defecting or retreating had stiffened up his men, the thirty-five hundred who were left.

  Hu’s, err, ‘ assassination by the Americans’, and General Jiang’s recall, had left the Chinese Navy in control of the People’s Humanitarian Mission in North America. When Beijing was lost, and the Civil War began, Admiral Liu’s loyalty, as a Navy man, had been with Yulin. Now, they were gone, too. Jiang had sold out to the Russians, but privately Ming knew it was the only move the General had left. With popular uprisings in Japan and Korea threatening the garrisons there, and an insurrection in Manila, the last report he had received from the Philippines was when the two American fleets hiding around Australia began shelling Davao City. That had been six days ago.

  Small craft swarm attacks by hundreds of fanatical Muslims on jet skis, speed boats, and cruisers had cost the U.S. Navy three ships while they had moved through Indonesian waters. That had slowed them down and kept them from getting into the fight sooner. They were able to stand off and sink five Kapitan Patimura class corvettes, two submarines, three missile boats, and a Ahmad Yani frigate who got too close, as well as several smaller craft. The Indonesian government had called for a jihad against the ‘invading infidels’. Jakarta and Surabaya had each gotten a visit by a carrier air wing bearing gifts, in response. As they broke off and headed north, the fleets sent over a hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles into the two cities, and another score into the Indonesian naval bases at Kupang and Tahuna. Each missile carried a thousand pounds of explosives. The Americans didn’t expect any more trouble on the way back. The three day delay in Indonesia had allowed the Chinese fleet to regroup in Manila

  Bay, and the surviving elements limped in piece by piece. Wary of each other in the aftermath of the civil war and the loss of their chain of command, twice in a row, the naval officers were divided. Some cruised east towards Hawaii, ostensibly to ‘provide relief to the garrison there’, but mainly to get out of the range of American and Russian guns. The majority, however, redeployed north in the East China Sea and made overtures to Jiang. Ming waited to see how that would work out for them.

  Admiral Liu was a stubborn man. He knew his superior well enough to understand that his resentment of General Jiang had played just as large a role in his decision to back Yulin in the civil war as had his loyalty to the Navy. Well, he had bet on the wrong horse, and now they were all suffering for it. Something had to be done about that. Without resupply by sea, or reinforcement, or withdrawal, they would not make it through the Spring. They already were crowded into the Bay Area with their backs to the ocean. What was it the Americans said also…”time to fish or cut bait”.

  That maniac pirate Vice Admiral Woods had been sinking any ship that they sent through the Golden Gate within hours, and there was no Chinese naval force this side of Honolulu that could lift the siege. A new state government had declared itself up in Redding, and invited American military forces under the control of St. Louis to intervene in California. Ming was glad that St. Louis was a long, long ways away. Almost as far as home, in the other direction. And just as unreachable.

  Admiral Liu’s flagship was now a nearly new type 052D destroyer, the ‘Changsha’, at anchor in the bay. Captain Ming’s ship, the Haikou, was a decade older and five hundred tons lighter, but he knew and trusted his crew like they were his family. His ship had the responsibility for air defense of the rest of the fleet, and the U.S. Seventh fleet liked to test that, nearly every day. That was why Ming and Liu anchored at opposite ends of the bay. Liu’s orders, for the safety of the flagship. A dozen frigates, corvettes, replenishment ships, and landing ships rested in a neat staggered row between them.

  It would be easy enough to cross the space under some pretense, and easy as well to do the job. Keeping the other captains from doing the same thing to himself in turn, afterwards, would be the challenge. Ming knew that he could do a better job of running things than the stuffed shirt in charge. Maybe he could break them out and get them home, where they could rejoin the navy. Jiang would have no problem with him, once Liu was out of the picture. It was the honorable thing to do. Not for himself, but for others. For his country. For the people.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking -- you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation...." –Dr. David Duke

  I Don’t Need Your Civil War

  Four identical looking green Jeep Cherokees, the official Church vehicle of preference, were lined up at the curb outside the Department of Public Safety for the ongoing trials of suspected homosexuals. A couple of skinny looking mission boys in their white shirts and black ties were giving out free cups of water to those lined up on the sidewalk to get a peek inside at the proceedings. “Free water! It’s the real thing, not Coke!” they called, as they walked up and down the line. Kelly kept moving, going around back to the employee’s entrance, where an armed security guard in the black uniform of Church security checked over her government employee I.D. before letting her in.

  Now that th
e ice was melting away and the breeze carried the promise of a permanent thaw, it was getting harder and harder for her to hide her hammer under her clothes. Based on the look the guard had given her, that wasn’t all that her warmer weather wear was showing off. For some that was a good thing, but sometimes, it was a bad thing.

  Kelly put her lunch in her desk drawer and fantasized for a moment about a forbidden cup of coffee, or three, before heading to her desk. Along with a stack of overnight interdepartmental correspondence and a couple of red-sealed courier messages marked ‘urgent’, as most things from upstairs were these days, as a paper. The Salt Lake Tribune was a government sanctioned publication, and today the office rotation of their copy had begun at her desk. Probably the night security trying to butter her up, figuratively or otherwise. She took her shoes off, wiggled her toes, and indulged in a few minutes of scanning the paper, since she was the first one at work, like usual. She liked to compare the official, censored version of reality with the uncensored narratives she heard from a dozen different perspectives on the shortwave most nights. It was kind of like going to a magic act, and knowing the secrets to all of the tricks.

  The Deseret Ministry of Information was obviously competing with the developing power center in St. Louis for the hearts and minds of their northern neighbors with the headline story: “After fighting a losing campaign for independence for five months, the United Dakota Sioux Nation and the First People’s Army have formally surrendered to expeditionary forces of the Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Montana National Guards, along with mounted infantry from the Canadian prairie provinces. The rebels at press time were laying down their weapons and agreeing to a new treaty consolidating them in a single reduced reservation in South Dakota. Both Montana and Wyoming each agreed to provide a herd of 200 cattle each fall to the 2000 surviving Sioux in a gesture of good will to their neighbor states. A commission of state governors and regional military leaders from Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the provisional states of Manitoba and Saskatchewan are cooperating in the relocation of Sioux from their territories to the new reservation by next Spring. The citizen posses of Pierre and Bismarck, as well as the Wyoming Rancher's Co-op Militia, are to be congratulated for their crucial defensive roles in putting down the insurrection, and will be rewarded for their heroism following the auction of forfeited Sioux land and properties.” Kelly figured the Prophet was angling for a sweetheart deal for some of that beef, himself, with that fluff job.